Industrial Business

Industries operate in many wild landscapes and seascapes. In some cases, their impacts cause direct degradation of wildlife habitat. In other cases, the effects of development are indirect, such as the building of roads into remote areas that inadvertently provide access to settlers and poachers. WCS is working with industries to improve environmental management throughout logging concessions, commercial fisheries, gas and oil fields, mining sites, and in other places where wildlife is at risk from natural resource exploitation. We work to ensure that industrial development plans take into account
conservation goals and are not at odds with a local economies and
values. WCS also assists in the
development of standards and best practices that can help guide
investment decisions, and works with governments to support
regulatory efforts and develop monitoring protocols to ensure compliance with environmental standards.

WCS Projects

WCS and its partners in the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Program explore and test modes of compensating the earth for pollution, habitat destruction, and other consequences of industrial growth and development.

Uganda’s Albertine Rift is a wildlife haven and an important source of food and water to local people. It also harbors important hydrocarbon reserves, and is a target for the country’s growing energy industry. WCS works to ensure the industry operates sustainably, with regard for the vulnerability of the surrounding environment.

WCS and the Capitanía de Alto y Bajo Isoso, the indigenous organization representing the Guaraní people of Bolivia’s Chaco, have worked as partners for more than 15 years. The partnership has helped both institutions deal with challenges arising from the rapid expansion of Bolivia’s hydrocarbon industry into this fragile landscape.

WCS works with the CIB logging company to reduce the pressures on gorillas, elephants, and other endangered wildlife in four timber concessions and to control the trade in bushmeat. This collaborative project is called PROGEPP: the Project for Ecosystem Management in the Nouabalé-Ndoki Periphery Area.

As oil and gas companies expand their reach into the world’s oceans, probing the depths for untapped stores of energy, many marine creatures could be under threat. WCS’s Ocean Giants Program is working off the coast of the Gulf of Guinea in west-central Africa to identify and mitigate the potential impacts of the industry’s activities to marine mammals and their habitats.

A
four-year WCS study finds the Teshekpuk Lake region within the National
Petroleum Reserve to hold the highest breeding bird density in Arctic
Alaska—one solid reason for its permanent protection from energy development.

This week, WCS scientists are trekking across the vast and remote Alaskan Arctic and deep into the National Petroleum Reserve to explore how best to conserve Arctic wildlife
in the midst of expanding energy development. WCS conservationist Steve Zack is chronicling the trip for the New York Times' Scientists at Work blog.